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Running a “Hey Lookit This” blog is fun. One of the things that amuses me is trying to figure out what’s hot and what’s not, and occasionally I look at the search engine terms that brought people to Tacky Raccoons in the first place. I might as well share the fun.

In the past year, we got a lot of hits for .gif animations. That’s unsurprising because over time we’ve collected a nice archive. Here are the top ten search engine terms April 2011 – April 2012:

Capybara (23K+ hits)

Dancing gif (21K+)

Possum (13K+)

10 (9.5K)

11 (3K)

Animation Fist Pump (3K)

Science Fair Projects (2K)

Motivational Poster (2K)

Babe (2K)

Woolly Bear Caterpillar (2K)

There are variations to each category, like plurals, additional words, misspellings, etc., so the number of hits are approximate – but those are by far the most popular, with thousands of hits each. Why so many people search for the numbers 10 and 11, and not other numbers is a binary mystery to me.

The rest is a hodgepodge of pure eclectic bizarreness. These are headscratchers, in order of rank:

these little beasties are street legal. they run on either kawasaki or honda motorcycle engines and co-opt vintage bumper car bodies into the most awesome form of mini-car we’ve seen in too long. there are seven of these little monsters floating around california, and they’re all the creation of one man, tom wright

“I’m just an entertainer, and I use music as a medium for entertaining. But I’m not really an entertainer either, because to be an entertainer it implies you have a great desire to want to entertain.”
Leon Redbone

Leon Redbone‘s take on Lonnie Johnson’s “Mr. Jelly Roll Baker” in 2009. (BTW, “jelly roll” was slang for something other than a pastry.)

On growing up in New Orleans Parish: “There was music all around us, and in my family you’d better play something, even if you just banged on a tin can.”
Lonnie Johnson

Lonnie Johnson created the single-note guitar solo in the 1920s, and decades passed before the guitar was regarded as more than a background rhythm instrument. I don’t know who’s on drums or piano, but that’s Willie Dixon on bass, and the vid is likely from the mid to late 1960s.

My first impression of “ethnomusicologist” Bob Brozman was that he’s a pretentious jerk. On the other hand, he’s crammed some great country/Delta blues licks into his American Steel.

Let’s wrap this baboso up with two of the greatest modern day slide guitar players, on stage together in Austin: Bonnie Raitt & Roy Rogers jamming “Gnawin’ On It.”

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Ted Nugent, a Michigan-born conservative who has endorsed Obama’s presumed Republican challenger in the November elections, Mitt Romney, drew Secret Service attention with his blunt remarks about Obama and administration officials at the NRA event.

“We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November,” Nugent said at the convention.

U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Convention, responded earlier this week, saying “threatening violence – or whatever it is that Nugent’s threatening – is clearly beyond the pale.” [via]

In response to Wasserman-Schultz, Nugent was typically blunt and to the point.

“Now what you gotta do, I’ll tell you what you gotta do You got to pretend your face is a Maserati It’s a Maserati It’s a Maserati It’s a gettin’ hotty It’s a Maserati, Maserati, Maserati It’s a fast one too man, that thing’s turbocharged You feel like a little fuel injection honey? I’ll tell ya about it, I’ll tell you about it I gotta get that hood scoop off, shine and shine and buff I’ll check out the hood scoop I gotta buff it up, buff it up, buff it up, buff it up, buff it up, Yeah, shiny now baby, heh heh heh You’ve been drivin’ all night long It’s time to put the old Maserati away.”

[Update: Photo in the screen cap was misidentified.
It is not Ted Nugent, it is Sammy Hagar. – Bunk.]

[Update II: Although the above is mostly snark, this is not. h/t RoL.]

Inspired by a version of the opening sequence of this clip called ‘What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth?’, I tracked down the original time-lapse sequence taken on the International Space Station (ISS) via NASA, found some additional ones there, including the spectacular Aurora Australis sequences, and set it to a soundtrack that almost matches the awe and wonder I feel when I see our home from above.

part theater, part revival, part frat party, part mardi gras. you will be forever changed after a CM show, whether fred sprays you with sweat, tosses you a drum stick, snarls-smiles, exhorts you to leap, sing or get down. its a jolt of energy. you wont need caffeine for days.